Today was a hectic day for sure. Taking advantage of the beautiful sunny day I decided to deep clean some pens-starting with the meat chickens. Due to the mud and water all of the young critters have been confined to close quarters to prevent any more drownings. Yes, the water has gotten that bad. Closed in animals equals lots of shoveling. Just as I had completed the meat chicken pen cleaning (and wrangled all the little escapees) my phone rang. Dear hubby was calling from the trail where he and the kids were working to drain some of the standing water (some spots were over 3 foot deep),placing logs over areas that had turned to soup and replaced logs that had completely washed away. Back to the reason for his call-it went something like this: Your pigs are almost to the swamp (our description of where the timber ends) call them home. Click. Hmmm, someone was clearly upset. I went out to the trees and began hollering and calling….nothing. Not a squeal or grunt to be heard. By the way have you ever noticed how “Ours” becomes “Yours” when children or critters are being difficult? Still no answer or site of the wandering pigs I call dear hubby back and he tells me they are heading back-apparently it isn’t a good thing when you fight to place a log in deep mud and a pig roots it out while your retrieving another log. Thinking the pigs have gotten sidetracked by some tasty morsel-or more likely taking a nap I am diverted to another call for help. I can hear a goat screaming like it’s been caught by the devil himself so off I head in the direction of the distress call. Two hours of hiking through willows, over and under fallen trees and through tall grass hiding said fallen trees I locate the screamer. Next to the creek, completely fine except she had gotten separated from the herd. Really? That is all I could think of at the moment to say to her. Now all her screaming was like calling every predator in the country out and I reach down to get some reassurance that I will be okay and guess what I did not have on my belt. Yep! In my haste I forgot to get my pistol. I had purposely left it in the cabin while cleaning the pens because this acidic slop is no good on gun metal. So I find myself in the middle of the banquet table and not a weapon on me. Thank heavens the Bears, wolves and coyotes were taking the time to enjoy the sunshine and not hunting idiots or I would have been dinner and the screaming goat dessert. Of course Doris the screaming goat got a severe reprimand and my yelling had caused the rest of the herd to come to investigate.
Hiking back to the cabin to resume my pen cleaning (nine goats following) I came upon a nice patch of cranberries. Of course I didn’t have a thing to put them in but there were so many! I couldn’t leave them just sitting there so I filled my shirt front and once again headed for home. Now for normal people this would have been a great reward for the effort of saving a little lost goat-NORMAL being the key word. Well if your as graceful as I am this is just one more of those incidents better left in the woods but of course I have to share it. Now mind you I already said it was a beautiful sunny day and I was outside working. That means I was wearing a tshirt-an almost white tshirt. When you couple an almost white tshirt full of extremely juicy red cranberries with a woman who has two left feet it’s pretty much a disaster waiting to happen. Yes, you guessed it-I tripped over an unseen log and try as I might not to lose the berries or break any crucial bones I land arm protecting berries mind you, on a soft but very large moss hump. It looked like I had been eviserated. Dripping red down one arm and all over the front of me my berries were now cranberry sauce and had anyone come up on such a site they would have thought I’d escaped being mauled. No harm no foul I continued onward to home, threw the “bloody” shirt in the burn barrel and only after I lit the trash did I think “wow that would of been a cool costume for one of the kids for Halloween”!
By now it is after 3 and I’m still not finished with my chores for the morning. I finished what I could of the pens, fed the ever starving meat birds again and was just getting the stove going again to heat up a cup of coffee when I look at the clock and see its 5:30. Wow where did my day go? More importantly where is my family? They had run into town to check the mail since they were already out by the truck and I got yet another phone call. This time it was one of the kids asking if the pigs had come home. Well, no……. 2 minutes later the phone rings again and I hear-found your pigs they are at the truck. Apparently they were wanting to go to town!
By the time dear hubby, the 3 kids and 2 wandering pigs pulled into the yard it was right at dark. Time for the evening chores to hurriedly get done and then back to the cabin where my cold cup of coffee sat there right where I had forgotten it. Supper wasn’t on the table until after 9 and it was a thrown together pot of chicken and dumplings from a jar of my home canned chicken.
As I write this it’s 2 a.m. and I have just made the rounds checking critters who are all sleeping snug and dry in their pens.
It’s a crazy, hectic and sometimes frustrating life here on Two Moose farm but as I climb the ladder to kiss each forehead of my sleeping children I thank God for his blessings he has bestowed upon our family. Now time for a quick nap before I have to start another day.
offgridalaska 